Troitsa – who describe themselves as an “Ethna-Trio” – are from Belarus, with an open, mysterious and often meditative sound. The founder, Ivan Ivanovich Kirchuk, is a senior lecturer in the Minsk University Of Culture, but he looks more like arch sonic explorer Steven Stapleton with long, wispy and graying goatee and a penchant for round spectacles. The sound also is anything but academic. Small percussion instruments, whistles and kalimba add to the atmosphere created by Ivan’s intimate rendering of the songs. He transmits a real depth of intent – which together with the interplay between the musicians makes this CD a joy to listen to – as does the clarity and spaciousness of the recording.

Geoff Burton

www.folkworld.de

Troitsa "7" Label: Sketis; 048; 2007

Troitsa "Son-trava"
Label: Fonografika; 2008

Troitsa is a trio from Belarus that was started in 1996. The first time I saw the trio play was in 2001 at the Folkwoods festival in Holland where the band became one of the highlights of the festival. I remember that even years later people were talking about the intense, almost mystical performance this band gave. In 2006 they returned to the festival, again with great success. Their first two cd’s were also recorded in Holland and published on the Dutch pan label, not easy to find but worth the search. The trio’s front man Ivan Kirchuk is a multi instrumentalist and singer who has a deep, warm voice. Besides him the band exists out of Yury Dzmitrieu on several string instruments and Jury Paulouski who is the percussionist of the band. The 7 album is a release from 2007 on the Russian Sketis label with recordings from 2004. It’s a fascinating album with dark, dreamy Russian psych-folk full of unexpected twists, strange sounds and some haunting music. It has elements of not only the Russian culture, but I hear light oriental, Balkan and Scandinavian influences. Their latest album Son Trava is published on a Polish label. This album has a more polished sound, without loosing this typical Troitsa sound. It has a more folk-rock orientated sound, but again with such a drive, such a tension in the music that I’m locked to the speakers for the whole hour this CD takes. It’s probably their most balanced album until today, with some fabulous arrangements, rhythms and vocal work. For all those who like experimental, dark-Russian folk, buy them both! You won't find music of this quality, with such an unique identity that often.

Not many releases come this way from Belarus, the land-locked and still politically unrelaxed country surrounded by the Baltic states, Poland, Ukraine and Russia, but several of those have been earlier releases from Minsk trio Troitsa, and they chart the progress to this sixth album.
Ivan Kirchuk is the possessor of one of those real, rumbling bass voices that seem to flourish in Russia and its near neighbours, and conjures mental images of a huge bearded Cossack in boots and floor-length furs.
He formed the original trio in 1996 to perform the traditional material he'd been finding since the 1980s in the villages of Belarus. After its first album the group broke up, but after a pause Kirchuk recruited Yuri Dmitriev and Yuri Pavlovsky, who supplement his armoury of 12-string guitar, domra, gusli, Jew's-harp, whistles, zhaleika and more with guitar, bass, domra, kalimba and percussion.
His singing tends to stay down in the gravelly basement, accessing tones that an epic film-trailer voice-over artist would kill for, but on occasion he rises through the frequencies, right up to a rather finely-controlled falsetto-alto.
Zimachka (Winter), recorded in Poland, is a remarkable and rather impressive thing of wild rhythmic pulses and gutsy instrumental textures, massive enough to match the Eisenstein-sized drama of Kirchuk's declamatory, welkin-ringing rendering of traditional songs brought a long way from the village but nevertheless still sounding like nothing in western Europe.
All the text on the package is in Cyrillic, but their web site www.troitsa.net has information in English.

Andrew Cronshaw

World Music Central.org (USA)

Belarusian Masters of Ethno Fusion

Posted in: CD Reviews Troitsa - Zimachka

(VIGMA 3666-1, 2011)

Belarusian trio Troitsa released their vibrant sixth album “Zimachka” (“Winter”) this year. Troitsa combines the rich folk music traditions of Belarus (an eastern European nation located between Poland and Russia) with contemporary elements.

“We work with an ethno-fusion style,” says group leader Yuri Pavlovski. “Our aim is to connect old Belorussian music to modern sounding acoustic music tools. Our collective has existed for more than 12 years.”